


Twenty perfect shots

by gerti



Series: The Cyberpunk Tenten collection no one asked for [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: All of the konoha kids will show up, Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, BAMF Tenten, But I'm giving it to you anyway, But only for like 1-2 chapters each, Gen, I just wanted you all to know that, Romance? Maybe, So I'm not going to tag every single one of them jesus christ, Tenten shooting a metric fuckton of people? Definitely, The Tenten-centric cyberpunk au no-one asked for, The draft title for this was Neo-Konohokyo, that has nothing to do with the story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 21:00:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14065491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gerti/pseuds/gerti
Summary: And one shot that wasn't.(Or: Twenty jobs that turned an orphan girl into a professional killer, and one that turned her into a legend.)





	1. The beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hyuga have a hitman. They say she's a woman who kills like it's breathing. They say no-one has ever survived being set in her sights.  
> She came from nowhere, raised by the streets and born with gun in hand.

**1.**

 

Tenten is thirteen the first time she pulls a trigger, and in thirteen years nothing she's done has ever felt so _right_.

She’s panting and throwing fleeting looks back over her shoulder as she scrambles through the trash-laden alleys, secure in nothing right now but the fact that if she’s caught out here- That’s it. That’s the end. She’s an unregistered orphan barely scraping by in the seedy underbelly of the city, no one will miss her. _No one will even know to look for her._

Thirteen years of living off picked pockets and pawning junk off the street, all for nothing.

She’ll never be seen again.

Because it’s not your common mugger she has to worry about tonight, she wouldn’t even have anything worth taking if it were. Just the too-large clothes on her back, half a switchblade, and a broken pistol she’s been working on for the past three weeks.

It's a pitiful defense against the duo of almost corpse-like men shambling unnaturally after her in the dark.

 

Sure they could just be junkies, or one of the dozen little cults that seem to spring up daily around here, but Tenten isn't willing to bet on it. Every urchin in the city has heard the rumors recently. Kids disappearing without a trace, always orphans and unregistered urchins, the ones that won't be missed. Sometimes entire gangs disappear in a single night. And the worst part is there's never a single clue about what's happened to them. No strangely fresh young organs flooding the black market, no unidentifiable corpses showing up in the river, nothing. It’s not like they’re being taken for ransom either, none of these kids are worth anything to anyone.

If Tenten ever  _does_ get caught by someone, she’d at least like to have the reassurance that she’ll be killed relatively quickly.

They'll have to catch her first though, and even panicked and half-starved Tenten is quick enough to give _anyone_ a run for their money in this part of town. It's a maze of nooks, crannies, and twisting alleyways that she's spent her whole life learning like the back of her hand. 

Three times she convinces herself that she's given her pursuers the slip. Once when she darts beneath a bridge, running full tilt through the vagrants packed together like sardines and stepping on as many fingers as she can in the hope that she’ll be lost in the mass of angry shouting. She almost gets grabbed by a scowling, toothless old hag with a nasty looking blade that’s more rust than metal. A better way to go than those _things_ , admittedly, but Tenten kicks her in the gut and bolts away to the tune of her shrieking curses into the night.

Despite all her efforts though, the instant she leaves the makeshift lights there they are again, sprinting after her with a loping, unsteady stride that makes them look all the more inhuman.

And again, when she climbs into the abandoned warehouse to hide among the ancient machinery.

And _again_ when, as a last resort, she lures them right to the edge of Inuzuka turf. Even the snarling fury of the territorial war-dogs fails to deter them from their single-minded pursuit.

It’s in a cramped alley behind the factory that they finally cut her off, surrounded by smooth walls and the factory’s fence. A fence she'd actually come here to try and climb over. There were plenty of alarms and such in the building proper she could set off without much effort, and at this point even being arrested was starting to sound more appealing than whatever her attackers had planned for her.

In her haste to get here she'd forgotten something important though. Namely that a recent string of vandalism had prompted the owners to swap out their old rusted fence for a new one. One that would send several thousand volts of electricity through her body if she so much as brushed against it.

She’s a little pleased to note, when her pursuers get close enough to examine, that one now has several bloody chunks torn out of it. It's probably the work  of the Inuzuka judging by the damage, very little else in this city will tear into you with their _teeth._ It’s a tiny, visceral pleasure to know that she’s at least _hurt_ the bastard.

She's less pleased to to have her back to a fifteen-foot tall electrified fence with no escape in sight while the two stumbling horrors steadily close the distance.

She's terrified, actually.

“Stay back!” The sound of her voice surprises her, high-strung and trembling with the swift onset of panic. Shouting won’t help her though, no one in their right minds would run _towards_ shouting in this part of the city.

Where before they'd been staring only vaguely in her directions, now they lock their vacant eyes on her as her voice echoes out. They open their mouths in response,  but when they do no words come out, just a tinny, mangled tune like a cheap ringtone.

The sound of it wrenches a choked sob from her, another step back bringing her so close to the fence she can feel it start to singe the end of her shoddily shorn hair.

 

No more running then, which means there’s only one thing left to do.

The gun is unnaturally heavy as she lifts it, like the weight of her fear is trying to force it back down again, telling her to just give up and hope she dies of fright before they get to her.

She keeps it steady, keeps a grip on the handle, a finger on the trigger, and a _snarl_ on her lips. She hasn’t survived over a decade out here just so she can die to two zombie movie rejects.

The pistol is something she’d found in a junk pile weeks ago. The casing is cracked and the innards are such a mess that a single glance would tell anyone it was beyond saving. The old folks drinking on the corner had told her as much when she’d scampered past them clutching it to her chest, that it was just a useless piece of scrap now, and if she wanted a gun that badly they knew a few places that wouldn't ask too many questions.

She’d been stubborn about it, as usual, bringing it to her little makeshift hideout to work on at night in the dim light of a stolen lamp. She was no mechanic, just a little girl with a decent head on her shoulders and probably too tenacious for her own good, but bit by bit she managed to piece the thing back together. Not that she'd ever fired the thing, as tempting as it might have been.

She'd even managed to scrounge up a bullet, risking her life to dig it out of the mud at the riverbank after a firefight between two families. That night she took a rag to it, polishing it until it shone before sliding it almost reverently into the empty clip of the pistol.

At the time it had been an incredible find, easily the most valuable of her meagre possessions.

Now she just wishes she’d found two.

It's a start though, and already plans to escape her predicament are running through her mind one after another. Maybe if she shoots one, she can escape around the other? They seem pretty slow, and she’s as slippery as any kid can be. At least then if she gets caught she'll know she at least _tried_.

She raises the gun, pointing it squarely at the man on the right.

_No_.

She stops, face twisting in displeasure before she sets her sights on the one to the left.

_Not yet_.

Again- It’s not right. Something stops her before she can take the shot, something even deeper than the fear gripping her heart so tight she fears it might burst.

_Wait._

Each second wasted brings them another step closer, their eerie, tinny songs getting louder in her ears.

Twenty feet. She sets her feet, mimicking the shooter’s stance she’s seen the policemen take up before they open fire.

Ten feet. Her grip on the gun tightens, knuckles going white with tension and her breath coming in swift, unsteady pants.

Five feet. She can see every last one of the pale scars criss-crossing their bodies, the aftermath of some sort of gruesome torture. Twisted bits of metal stick in and out of their skin at seemingly random intervals, serving some unknown purpose. It's a little unfair that they don’t seem to hinder their movement nearly as much as they ought to.

With a burst of speed far surpassing what they've shown her thus far the one on the right lunges for her, pulling ahead of his companion.

And suddenly, everything slows. The world grows sharp and clear, every distraction boiling away until she can _see_ it.

_Take the shot._ Says the voice in her bones.

She pulls the trigger.

It's the sort of shot that you usually only see in movies, punching through the skull of the first man and straight through to the second. Both of them instantly crumple as the deafening crack of the gunshot echoes through the streets, thick blood oozing slowly from the fractured holes in their skulls. Perhaps it's just the light, but it almost looks like tar pooling beneath them.

 

Soon the only sound left is her sobbing breaths in the aftermath, the world around her returning to normal. She barely registers what she's done, death is all too common around here after all. 

So she runs. She doesn’t even stop to dig through their pockets first, doesn’t stop for anything until she’s back in the safety of her shoddy little home, holding tight to her gun and to the brand new perspective swirling through her mind. 

She’d thought, once upon a time, that she wasn’t meant for anything all that important. That she was just another unlucky kid destined to live and die without ever making any sort of mark on the world.

Now though, now she has something. Something _special_ even.

And sometimes that’s how a legend begins: With two dead men and a shitty, broken gun.


	2. Rock Lee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her hands are as deadly as the gun on her hip.   
> She trained for years under a master of the arts.   
> They say she fought the Champ once, that she forced him into a draw.

**2.**

 

The first time she meets the little boy with the awful haircut and even  _ more  _ awful fashion sense is during the very short period she stayed at the city’s orphanage. He was one of those kids that everyone wanted to adopt, ever-optimistic and cheerful, and sporting one hell of a sob story. (Not that he ever used that to his favor, he didn’t have a disingenuous bone in his body.)

 

Unfortunately, very few prospective parents were aware of what it takes to raise a child with nanomachine rejection syndrome. A completely unaugmented child is susceptible to all sorts of ailments that a normal one wouldn’t ever need to worry about. So while Rock Lee is always one of the quickest children to be adopted, he’s also the child who’s been returned the most.

 

The last Tenten had seen of him he was being picked up by his newest father, a man who she swears to  _ god  _ had the strangest outfit she’d ever seen. What sort of respectable parent had the words ‘YOUTH IS IN BLOOM’ printed in rainbow colors across the back of his jacket?

 

She’d thought she’d never have to find out, since the next day she booked it out of the orphanage and never looked back.

 

The second time she meets him is when she’s just finished snatching the wallet from out of his pocket, already grinning at a job well done. A second later she found herself face-down on the ground with her arm twisted painfully behind her back, and for the life of her she never could quite figure out how it happened.

 

At the age of 23 Rock Lee will be a household name to those with even a passing interest in martial arts. “The man who surpassed the machine” they’ll call him, for taking down no less than four augmented opponents simultaneously without any augmentations of his own.

 

His face would be on _ cereal boxes _ if he wanted it, but he turns down every sponsorship except the one belonging to his adoptive father’s old, worn-out dojo.

 

At 14 though, he's mostly just annoying.

 

Because somehow, through some inexplicable characteristic of inherently good guys, he remembers that scrawny girl from the orphanage who wrestled kids three years her senior into the dirt. The instant he does he’s tugging her up from the ground with a bouyant apology and turning to introduce her to the man by his side.

 

He calls himself Maito Gai, and the first thing he does after shaking her hand firmly enough to leave her entire arm sore is return Lee’s wallet to him with an unnervingly disappointed gaze. If she’d ever had parents she might have built up some resistance to an expression like that, but she hasn’t, so it’s doubly effective in making her feel inexplicably guilty.

 

Not guilty enough to actually  _ listen  _ to Gai’s long-winded speech of course. Not now that it's gone from something about the ignoble nature of crime to some sort of rant about… Spring? And the joys of youth? What? The creepiest part is the way Lee is standing there nodding along beside him, apparently able to actually parse the crazy talk she’s hearing.

 

Maybe if she smiles and nods enough he’ll think she actually listened and go on his merry, potentially insane way.

 

He does not. Instead she finds herself dragged to a nearby food-stall and bombarded with so many questions she doesn’t even have time to object when a fresh, warm pastry is shoved into her hands. She tries her best to keep up, forcing herself to take her time and savor the first fresh food she’s had in ages. It's only polite.

 

Where do you live?

 

“Oh you know- I have a little place for myself.” (A beat up old apartment that’s  _ long  _ since been condemned.)

 

What have you been up to?

 

“Just little odd jobs here and there.” (Petty crime and selling whatever scrap she finds to the pawn shop.)

 

Did you get adopted then? Where are your parents?

 

“No no- It’s just me. But don’t worry, I’m managing pretty well on my own!” (Most nights she manages to scrounge up enough cash for a decent meal.  _ Most _ nights.)

 

With every question she answers Gai’s smile gets smaller and smaller, until soon enough he’s giving her an expression that’s unnervingly canny. She tries not to sink into herself when his gaze flickers over her once more, taking in the details he might have missed before. Third-hand patched up clothes draped loosely over a noticeably thin frame, unwashed hair that was probably cut with a knife, all the signs of a child just scraping by on her own.

 

Gai, she knows, isn’t doing so hot financially himself. No one in this kind of city would bother to step foot in a dojo, not when you can buy a shoddy pistol off the street corner and defend yourself just as easily. He can probably barely afford the kid he’s got.

 

And yet he still offers her his hand. Offers her a place in his home without a second thought.

 

Just like that.

 

Lee is obviously equally enthused by the idea, despite the fact that she’d started out their fateful reunion by  _ robbing  _ him. Both of them are so quick to forgive and it’s  _ insane. _ Maybe their insanity is rubbing off on her though, because for a moment she considers it.

 

Only for a moment though.

 

She’s surprised once more when, after politely refusing and getting ready to excuse herself back home, the man gives her another offer without missing a beat.

 

“Join my dojo then young lady!” He shouts, assuming what she'll soon refer to as his ‘Good Guy Pose’. Many a bystander give him Looks that he ignores with the ease of long practice. “Learn the ancient and revered art of Taijutsu and never again be without a defense against the unyouthfulness that festers within this city!”

 

She shakes her head. She doesn’t have any money to join a gym, and she tells him as much.

 

Again without a hint of hesitation, he offers her a ninety-nine percent discount.

 

She shrugs helplessly, feeling the tightness welling up in her chest at the look of genuine gentleness on his face. She excuses herself before it can reach her eyes, the last thing she wants is to start crying because some stupid old man was nice to her.

 

As she makes her goodbyes, smiling and waving at the garishly kind-hearted duo while they disappear into the crowd, Tenten reaches into her pocket. She wasn’t being  _ entirely  _ honest earlier, she does have  _ some  _ money. A single coin to be specific, not even enough to buy a pack of gum from the corner-store.  _ Defintiely _ not enough to afford martial arts lessons, even at a ninety-nine percent discount.

 

But maybe…

 

She turns to look back at the retreating figures, a near-impenetrable wall of people milling about and separating them. Even she, with her impressively nimble footwork, wouldn’t be able to push her way through the crowd without a whole lot of luck. For all intents and purposes, she's missed her one and only window of opportunity here. 

 

So instead she takes a moment to breathe, her eyes flickering between the dozens of metal, neon-lit signs hanging over the street and bathing it in light. It’s hard to pick just the right one considering every moment she hesitates her target gets further and further away, but she perseveres. She might an idiot for getting her hopes up, but she's not so old that she's stopped dreaming just yet.

 

She finds it. It's a rusty old placard that’s seen better days sure, but the moment she spots it she  _ knows _ .

 

The coin flies true, pinging off the sign and right into Maito Gai’s outstretched hand. He hadn’t even needed to turn around to catch it.

 

“That’s all I have on me!” She calls out to him, unsure if she can even be heard over the mass of humanity separating them. “I can’t afford anything more!”

 

He pauses, examining the pittance she’s offered him, and for a moment she wonders if he’ll refuse even after all he’s said. Instead he flips the coin into the air, catching it with an upraised fist that turns into a thumbs up aimed in her direction.

 

“I’ll be expecting you bright and early tomorrow morning!” His voice carries through the crowd with ease, and he turns to give her his shiniest grin yet. “Don’t be late!”

 

The next day, before the sun is up, she’s presented with the most atrocious looking gi she’s ever seen in her life. She tells her new sensei so, but still it remains with her, balled up at the back of her closet until the day she dies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No murder in this chapter, but I assure you all that's going to change very quickly.  
> Rock Lee is a Good and Soft boy no matter how dystopian your city might be, and don't worry we'll probably be seeing more of him eventually.


	3. Living Legends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They say she’s met the Queen of the Desert.  
> They say she gave her that scar.

**3.**

 

There are two types of people in this world: Those who live in the city, and those who live in the borderlands. It’s a harsh world out beyond the ever-bright streets of Konoha. What was once an ocean of verdant nature has long since been picked clean of every last resource. It’s nothing but a wind-blasted wasteland now, an endless desert where those who shun society eke out their meager existence. They’re nomads for the most part, roving packs of hard-eyed warriors that have to fight every day for survival.

 

The first time she meets someone from the borderlands she's sixteen and still very much an idiot, assuming that some lost looking, weirdly dressed girl will be an easy mark. Perhaps if she’d known where she was from it would have stopped her.

 

Or perhaps it would have just spurred her on, a simple mugging becoming some petty vengeance for Lee, who even now teeters on the brink of death after his own run-in with one of these lunatics. Regardless of her motive, the result would have been the same. Tenten is just some streetwise punk after all, and her would-be-quarry? Well.

 

You don't survive long in the borderlands unless you earn it.

 

Tenten barely has time to draw her gun before the foreigner whirls around to face her, the distinctive rustle of cloth enough to draw her attention. It's at this point that several unfortunate things happen in quick succession.

 

First, she gets her first good look at her mark. A mask covers the lower half of the girl’s face, but a few details remain burned into her memory. Blonde hair pulled up in a frankly _unnecessary_ number of ponytails and cold green eyes that, had Tenten seen them even a second before, would have had her smacking herself for even _considering_ pulling a weapon on her. Tenten has killed two men in her life and it shows.

 

This girl has probably killed dozens.

 

The time is right, though. The shot is good. Her blood chills, the world sharpens down to a single point, and in that crystalline moment she feels her finger instinctively curl.

 

There's a horrendous sound, like a stray bus has suddenly crashed into the side of the building behind her. It’s hard to believe that even a gun could make a noise like that, hard to believe the hunk of welded scrap metal in the girl’s hands even _is_ a gun. But apparently it is, because Tenten's arm is just... gone. Not gone as in cut off, or mangled, or even just torn away. All that's left from her left shoulder down is a gratuitous spray of red mist splattering all the way back out of the alley to the street.

 

In that echoing moment of shock before the pain of it all sends her screaming to her knees she witnesses her own handiwork. The strap of the girl's mask has been shot cleanly through, leaving a bloody streak across her now-visible face.

 

Her last lucid thought is that this girl might be kind of pretty if her cheek wasn't split open to the bone like that.

 

Hopefully the scar will be something to remember her by.

 

-

 

She doesn't remember much of what happened next. A few brief flashes of stumbling through alleyways that are quickly swallowed up by the unbearable agony emanating from her obliterated shoulder. The rest is dark though, blissful unconsciousness claiming her mind.

 

When she wakes again, it's to a familiar dream.

 

“You awake then kid?” The voice is gruffer than usual, just a little off from all of the videos and interviews she’d watched, and when she opens her eyes it’s not to the stark whiteness of a doctor's office like usual but what looks like some back-alley chop shop. The kind only the truly desperate go to when they don't mind a kidney getting ‘lost' along the way.

 

The dingy atmosphere isn't what matters though, because the only important part of this dream is standing right over there. Lady Tsunade, the greatest surgeon and prosthetics expert _ever_. The woman who’d stood face to face with a malevolent god and, by all reports, had punched its teeth in.

 

Tenten's hero.

 

“Mmfine- How’re you?” The words come out slurred, almost unintelligible. Tsunade must have her on some _good shit_ , her entire body feels like it’s floating on a cloud.

 

She's also strapped down, which is… Huh. She hadn't known she was into that sort of thing.

 

“ _Fine_ isn't the word I'd use, personally.” Tsunade replies with a hum, flipping through a medical chart and deftly ignoring the wink Tenten sends her way. “Even when I was practicing regularly I didn’t see injuries like yours every day.”

 

"Did you kiss it better?" Is Tenten's poorly thought out response, accompanied by an uncharacteristic fluttering of her lashes. The talking part of this dream doesn't usually last this long, and in her medically induced drunkenness all she really wants is to help it escalate in the usual manner.

 

The incredibly dry stare Tsunade gives her is the first clue that maybe she's fucked up. Then the woman presses a button on her pad, and like a splash of cold water all of Tenten's senses instantly return to her.

 

She is suddenly very aware that she's on the operating table of a living legend.

 

A living legend she just hit on.

 

Oh god. Oh _no_ . She needs to change the subject before Lady _fucking_ Tsunade turns her into a fine red paste.

 

It’s while she’s desperately searching for a new, less dangerous topic that she notices it. ‘It’ being the shiny metal arm lying innocently beside her. A prosthetic left arm, to be specific. Which- Wait…

 

Realization hits her all at once. Her arm- Her _arm!_ Fucking _hell where was her fucking arm?!_

 

Tsunade is kind enough to release her restraints before she vomits all over the crappy operating table. God but it’d be embarrassing to survive through all that just to drown in her own puke when she woke up. The hand on her back is unexpected, rubbing soothing circles while she hyperventilates on her hands (hand) and knees, just staring at the empty space her left arm had once occupied.

 

Some distant part of her catalogues what’s being said, registering anything Tsunade tells her as ‘Inherently Important’.

 

She’s been in and out of consciousness for nearly a week now. Apparently she collapsed right on Tsunade’s doorstep, which was supposed to be a _secret_ by the way. And last but not least: Yes the arm was for Tenten, she’d even gone and installed the necessary port while the girl was out cold.

 

As much as Tenten wants to believe in the generosity of her idol, she can’t help but wince at that. There’s no way in hell there won’t be a price to pay for a prosthetic made by the legend herself.

 

Tsunade seems to catch her distrust, waving off the wary glance with a huff.

 

“Don’t worry about the price,” She says. “I’m giving you a discount on a colleague’s recommendation.”

 

At the word ‘colleague’ the woman waves idly at the corner of the room, and the sudden sight of what appears to be a pale, malnourished _corpse_ chained thoroughly to the wall is doing nothing for Tenten’s upset stomach. She manages to avoid puking on the floor again, just barely. Because asking ‘what the actual fuck?’ is a more pressing matter right now.

 

Just a souvenir, is Tsunade’s completely unhelpful explanation. Apparently she keeps it around for the nostalgia.

 

And just when she thinks today couldn't get weirder, a third voice chimes in.

 

“Don’t feel too bad, that’s how she answered when _I_ asked as well.” At this point maybe she should just stop making assumptions, because what she’d assumed to be a corpse (And it _had_ to be right? The thing wasn’t breathing, hadn’t so much as _twitched-_ ) was now looking right at her.

 

“Orochimaru.” Even Tsunade sounds mildly surprised by the sudden reanimation, though it doesn’t show on her face. She just sighs and lights up a cigarette, giving the bindings holding him in place a cursory inspection.

 

“He-” She pauses, glancing at the figure for his confirming nod before continuing. “ _He’s_ the one who led you here, apparently. So say your thanks kid.”

 

Orochimaru. _Orochimaru_.

 

She numbly stutters out a ‘Thank you’, the words hollow in her mouth as she meets the gaze of a second legend in as many hours.

 

Tsunade had looked at her like a patient. The girl who’d taken her arm had looked at her like a target. _Most_ people looked at her like an annoyance, just something to be ignored or pitied. Gai and Lee were the only ones who really looked at her like a person.

 

Orochimaru is a genius inventor, the greatest programmer to ever exist. He’s the first and only person to achieve the impossible and upload his very consciousness to the net, meaning the man before her is effectively immortal.

 

He looks at her like a _petri dish_.

 

Tenten isn’t proud to admit it, but she pukes again.

 

Tsunade groans at that, sparing a glare and a muttered admonishment at her inhuman partner. Orochimaru just looks amused at the reaction, like she’s a particularly interesting line of code that’s not behaving how it ought to.

 

“Now now it’s quite alright Tsunade, we actually have something of a history. Did you know she once killed two of my little experiments with one bullet?” Something like approval appears on his face, and he squirms in his bindings as if he’s trying to approach her. Even knowing he can’t possibly move she inches backwards just a bit further. “And to think I thought she’d be just another test subject like the rest. Ah the things I could do with you, Tenten. The things I could _make_ _from you.”_

 

She’s lucky the man seems to like the sound of his own voice so much, else her terrified silence might be some cause for offense. She’s also lucky that Tsunade, blessed angel that she is, seems to take some issue with her quasi-immortal former teammate saying such things to one of her patients. Her half-burnt cigarette bounces off the man’s face mid-sentence, leaving a smudge of ash on his cheek and cutting him off before his imminent rant can pick up too much steam.

 

Estranged or not, these two once fought through hell together. All it takes is a look to convince Orochimaru to back down, a sibilant chuckle marking his surrender.

 

He leaves her with one parting remark though.

 

“I never did lose track of you after that night.” His eyes gleam as he says it, drawing her in like a viper does a mouse. “It always pays to keep an eye on children with potential.”

 

And then he’s gone, nothing more than a corpse on the wall and Tenten is left alone with Tsunade again. It’s less comforting than she might have thought less than a week ago. Still, it’s some small reassurance when the woman rests a hand on her remaining arm, gently guiding her back to the bed so she can fiddle with the new metal port that's replaced most of her left shoulder.

 

The air is tense and silent all the way through the attachment of her new arm. Where Tenten would normally be abuzz with questions for the woman currently slotting the limb into place, she’s apparently reached her limit. Getting shot, losing an arm, meeting a legend and then getting politely threatened by a _second_ legend- It’s all just too much. It’s all she can do to numbly go through the calibrations, lifting her strangely heavy limb this way and that, curling the fingers sluggishly and shaking her head no with each iteration of ‘does this hurt’-

 

It does hurt, it hurts a lot actually. Tsunade must know it too, judging by the ziploc bag of pills she’ll find tucked away in her pocket afterwards. She just really wants to go back to someplace that makes sense.

 

“If I don’t see your ass back here within the week I’ll _find_ you, got it kid?” Tenten stands on Tsunade’s doorstep once all is said and done, nodding obediently along with the woman’s grumbled diatribe. “You may be getting a discount, but I don’t do _shit_ for free. We’ll find some way for you to work it off since you don’t look like you have any cash to spare.”

 

She really doesn’t, especially not the amount one might need to pay for a high-end prosthetic. Working off something like this could take _years_ , even with her apparently substantial discount. Tenten wouldn'y even consider running out on this particular bill though, not like she had anything better to do with her time.

 

“And hey, come back in a few years and we’ll see about that kiss.” She’s barely listening, just nodding once more at the wry final words. It’s not until the door slams in her face and she’s already turning around that they make it through the numbness blanketing her skull, freezing her solidly in place for at least a minute.

 

That was a joke, right?

 

Right?

 

She gets herself shot again on her eighteenth birthday, just in case.

  
She doesn't get a kiss that time either. She _does_ get to meet the woman's new apprentice though, a pretty pink haired mechanic who gives her one hell of an earful about the dozen knife-sized hidden compartments she's carved into her new arm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please consider Tenten with a badass robot arm. Because that's a solid reason for me to keep up with this fic ngl.


	4. Godslayer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They say there's no gods left. One by one she shot them all down till Heaven lay bare behind her.

**4.**

 

Religion is a finicky concept in a city like Konoha, where technology and hedonistic excess rule the upper echelons of society. In an age long past the time of merciful gods the only churches you'll find are old and decrepit, home to the most desperate dregs of society.

 

The only sects that survive long are the cults that pop up here and there. The ones that encourage all manner of hellish ‘salvation', and Jashinism is inarguably the worst of them all.

 

Most folk know better than to approach the beat-down club marked with their bloody symbol, but every night a steady stream of humanity will make their way through those doors. It's the greatest party you'll ever go to, they say, an orgy of dancing and bloodshed that lasts all through the night.

 

Less than half of them will walk back out come morning though. Everyone knows you don't get to leave Jashin’s holy temple until you’ve been christened with blood. Anyone who walks through those doors is looking to die, or be reborn.

 

Tenten, being a girl with some modicum of common sense, never thought she’d ever come within a hundred yards of the place. Which is why it's a little bit baffling to her that she's walking through the door in the sort of ragged, punkish outfit the clientele seem to prefer with a _cop on her arm._

 

This Shikamaru guy is lucky he knows someone Tsunade owes a few favors to, otherwise she’d have told him to take his stupid deathwish and stuff it.

 

It's too loud inside to ask him for the tenth time if he's actually sure about this plan of his. Deafening techno music drowns out everything but the occasional scream from somewhere in the writhing mob packed wall to wall in this place. She’s not sure what she _hopes_ they’re screaming about at this point.

 

The room is lit up in flashes by the dizzying neon lights overhead. It's a headache-inducing blitzkrieg of sound and color, though the worst of it all is the _smell_. She almost slips on her first step, the floor is dangerously slick, squishing beneath her feet.

 

She regrets taking even a moment to wonder why that might be.

 

It's easily one of the worst places she's ever been, and she hopes her scowl conveys that much to her partner.

 

Shikamaru, the jerk, isn't even looking her way.

 

He's looking all the way to the other side of the club, where atop the raised stage is a cackling madman with a grinning skull painted across his face.

 

It's the head priest himself, fiddling with a bloodstained audio table and clearly having the time of his life standing amidst a dozen corpses arranged in various agonized poses. The remains of those who’d failed to attain priesthood no doubt, or just particularly unlucky attendees.

 

Well, that's step one.

 

Step two is getting close enough to tag him without getting spotted.

 

Step two is also, predictably enough, where everything goes to shit.

 

They’re halfway through the uncomfortably intimate press of human bodies when they're spotted. Well, _Shikamaru_ is spotted, more specifically. And wow it would’ve been nice to know earlier that the two had already met. Because the instant the priest’s eyes land on her suddenly tense partner the music cuts out mid-beat, and all he has to do is point to have a dozen grinning lunatics grabbing them where they stand.

 

She struggles. He struggles. Their efforts are equally pointless as the howling freaks around them drag them forward. It’s times like these that she wishes her fancy metal arm worked like they did in the movies, things would be so much easier if she could toss the person holding her across the room. Unfortunately her new limb is only a little stronger than her original arm because, as Tsunade had so eloquently put it: A prosthetic can only be as strong as the meat it’s attached to.

 

Make it too strong and it would just tear itself right off her shoulder. Which means there’s little to nothing she can do as she’s pulled along.

 

“Well well, welcome back kiddo!” The head priest- ( _Hidan_ . That’s what Shikamaru had called him in the briefing.) is leering down at them from where he’s climbed up to stand atop his DJ table, a microphone held loosely in his hand. By now the two of them are stood right at the raised edge of the stage, close enough to see the mad red gleam in the man’s eyes as he crouches down to get a good look at them. “And here we all thought we wouldn’t be seeing you again! Come to get in on a little bit of our _benediction_?”

 

Shikamaru merely grits his teeth, and if looks could kill this entire building would be nothing but a crater full of radioactive slag by now. It doesn’t seem to impress Hidan all that much. If anything his grin just gets wider as he hops down to crouch at the edge of the stage, grabbing a fistful of black hair and tugging his head forward until they’re practically face to face.

 

“Did you think you’d be worthy of Jashin’s blessing after you ran off with your tail between your legs?” The words are hissed and quiet, breathless with almost lurid anticipation. “‘Least your buddy from before put up a _fight_ . You bring this one so you could toss _her_ in the fire too?”

 

His attention switches to her a moment later, and she can’t help the pounding of her heart when he leans in to her. “She’s not a bad sacrifice if you did- Oh I can _smell_ the blood on this one, I can.”

 

She recoils as he cups her face in his hand, palm disgustingly slick against her skin. He opens his mouth to continue, but honestly? She’s had enough of this bullshit. Before he can say another word her teeth snap down on a stray finger with an audible crunch, a spurt of something that isn’t quite blood filling her mouth with a familiar coppery taste.

 

Then she spits it right in his stupid face.

 

She expects a scream, that’s the usual response to having a finger crushed between some girl’s teeth. She doesn’t expect him to bare a vicious smile right back at her as his blood runs down her chin, definitely doesn’t expect him to stand up and _howl-_ the hush of the crowd exploding as he splatters his blood across the sea of mad faces.

 

What happens next is that she’s dragged back into the mass of cultists behind her, struggling and clawing at as many as she can reach before she’s shoved once more out into an inexplicable clearing amidst the crowd. They’ve all pulled back to allow for a small open space, hemmed in by a wall of people on every side. She sees Shikamaru being restrained at the opposite edge of the circle, his frantic shouting drowned out by all the screaming.

 

It’s easy enough to identify it for what it is. It’s a ring. The sort of makeshift arena she’s seen in dozens of back-alley death matches.

 

She has a brief moment to wonder who her opponent is meant to be before Hidan leaps from the stage to land across from her. He’s still grinning, blood dripping from his mangled finger as he stretches his arms wide.

 

Someone from the crowd pushes a bat into her hand, an old wooden thing with a length of nasty looking barbed wire wrapped around the length of it. It seems solid enough though, and just having a weapon is enough to put her mind a little more at ease.

 

Until a fucking _scythe_ comes spinning out of the crowd to fly directly into Hidan’s outstretched palm.

 

That’s just… _Why?_

 

She doesn’t have time to lament her awful luck, because between one second and the next he’s crossed the distance between them. She barely ducks beneath the heavy blow, hearing the shriek as some unlucky member of the crowd catches a gash across her gut in Tenten’s place. Probably whoever handed her the bat, come to think of it. She almost feels bad if it was.

 

Almost.

 

Hidan doesn’t let his miss distract him for a moment though, swinging around to face her with an almost childish glee. She weaves around his next wild slice, sets her feet, and looks him dead in the eye as she swings her bat straight into his gut.

 

It’s frustratingly anticlimactic when her blow barely makes him pause, his scythe pulling back towards her from behind as she frantically spins away from him once more.

 

The next few minutes go much the same, Hidan coming after her with a tireless barrage of blows and Tenten doing her best to dance around them. He swings so wildly that it’s almost too easy to take advantage of the openings, her bat thudding against his body again and again. She breaks his knee, tears a dozen bloody gouges out of his chest and stomach with the barbs wrapped around her weapon, even shatters his jaw with a particularly risky shot that has her scrambling on hands and knees through the gore to escape his counter.

 

None of it slows him down in the slightest. He just. Keeps. Coming. With every blow, with every nick of his scythe across her bloodied skin, with every heaving breath she takes as the effort of constantly moving and swinging takes its toll, the insane gleam in his eye only grows brighter.

 

For a second, she sees something behind him. Peering over his shoulder is a grinning skull. Wrapped around his shoulders are two skeletal arms, bony fingers digging into his chest to grip his heart.

 

She sees Death embracing him. Like a lover. Like a child.

 

“You see him, don’t you?” He whispers the words, but she hears them all too clearly over the surrounding din. “ _Jashin._ ”

 

The skeletal figure looks up at the name, staring at her with its eerie, empty gaze. She can barely meet its stare, can barely see as, out of the corner of her eye, Shikamaru continues to struggle against his captor. There’s blood running down the side of his face, probably from one of the dozen or so cultists jostling all around him. He’s so close, close enough to touch if she thought she could get away with it.

 

“You could have this too, you know.” Hidan continues, trailing his scythe along the floor as he steps toward her. The spectre grips him tighter as he does so. “We can see it in you, Jashin knows what you could be. You could kill and kill all you want and _never die_.”

 

He brings his blade to his lips, and though the _thing_ hasn’t moved she can feel its fingers wrapping around her throat. She can’t breathe, can barely even think in the face of the monster walking towards her. She knows if she takes even one step towards it, it will be the end of her as she is now.

 

So she takes a step back instead, pivoting on her foot and putting every last ounce of strength she can muster into one more _swing_.

 

Shikamaru is a pretty tall guy, tall enough that even hunched forward the beast of a man holding him in place only has about half a head of height on him. Which means he can probably feel the wind of it when her bat fractures the cultist’s skull and drops him like a sack of bricks. Dead or unconscious, she doesn’t really care which. All that matters is that he’s free now, which means he can slip out the tiny black device he’s been keeping in his pocket all this time. She can hear the sound of a blade whipping through the air when he reaches out to point it behind her.

 

Hidan is frozen in place when she looks over her shoulder, the tip of his scythe bare inches from the back of her neck.

 

After a steadying moment she tosses her bat to the side and tears the scythe straight from his paralyzed grip. The crowd has gone silent now, watching with bated breath as she lifts one booted foot to kick him to the ground. He lays there, still frozen on his back and splayed out like some macabre butterfly.

 

 _“_ Fuck _-_ ” She stares his murderous god dead in the eye and brings the scythe up over her head, baring her teeth in a bloody snarl. “ _You!”_

 

The blade buries itself into Hidan’s chest with a disgusting squelch.

 

The crowd goes silent, staring in breathless anticipation. Tenten knows he isn't dead, just frozen in place by the device in Shikamaru’s trembling grip. They don't know that though, as far as they’re aware she's just killed their supposedly immortal leader.

 

A second ticks by. Then another.

 

Then an unholy shriek rings out and they descend on Hidan’s body like vultures. She doesn't see much of it, thank god, she's already grabbed Shikamaru by the scruff of his jacket and dragged him halfway to the door before the sound of it reaches her. The crowd parts around her easily, partygoers and cultists alike keeping their distance.

 

She doesn't see it when Shikamaru drops the lighter, just smells the smoke when the tiny flame catches something flammable. They're the first to escape, at the head of a sea of panicked and bloodstained people. Some are left behind to be consumed by the flames, but only those truly faithful who never intended to leave alive in the first place. The rest spill out onto the streets, quickly dispersing before the potential arrival of any authorities.

 

It's a bit strange, this odd calm after the storm of a night they've had. She stands quietly with Shikamaru and watches as the building slowly crumbles beneath the inferno, counting the aches and pains that are just now making themselves known. Her partner in this crime lets out a long sigh after some time. She doesn't comment when he steps forward to light up a cigarette with their impromptu bonfire, just watches the way the flickering light plays along his sharp features.

 

“So.” She hates to ruin the moment, but it really does need to be said. “You know he's not dead right?”

 

It's a simple deduction. _Maybe_ burning to ash was the one true way to kill him or whatever, but she wasn't going to bet on it. Not when she can still see that hazy, skeletal figure leering at her through the smoke.

 

“Doesn't matter.” She lifts an eyebrow at his drawled response, he shrugs it off with a sigh.

 

“This whole lot will be under six feet of concrete by tomorrow morning.” A lazy flick sends his cigarette spiraling into the flames, and she wonders if he can see it when the apparition fades with its passing. “Honestly? I _hope_ he's still alive when it happens.”

 

Well that's that problem taken care of. Not a perfect solution by far, but good enough for her to feel comfortable sleeping tonight. It's a shame the rest of his plan hadn't been so well thought out. She can't work up the energy to be cross about it though. Maybe later, when she's not just happy to still be alive. All she wants to do now is knock herself out on cheap whisky and sleep for the rest of the week.

 

She’ll break into one of Tsunade’s poorly hidden stashes later that night, and she’ll drink herself stupid until the memory of that looming god is burned from her memory. Whatever tomorrow may bring, it will almost certainly be better than this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jashin confirmed for party god. 
> 
> Skipped ahead a bit here, because even though I'd planned to have a chapter where Tenten adjusted to her new arm and met Sakura and all sorts of things, I couldn't for the life of me get it to work out properly. And hey, what even is continuity am I right?
> 
> Also throwing out yet another of my personal dreams this chapter: Punk Tenten beating people down with a baseball bat.


	5. A reputation is a dangerous thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A failed Uchiha, some will claim.  
> Or maybe, a perfected one.

**5.**

 

In the city of Konoha, one of the surest signs that your day is about to go to shit is when you bump into Itachi  _ Fucking _ Uchiha in the bread aisle at the supermarket. 

 

The second-surest sign is when, rather than A) Ignoring your very existence or B) Murdering you and every living thing within a square mile radius, he instead smiles and kneels down to help pick up the eleven cans and one loaf of bread that have fallen from your slack fingers. 

 

It’s a curious act of politeness from one of the most wanted mass-murderers in history. This is the man who regularly tears through millions of dollars worth of military hardware every time the government manages to track him down. The man who assassinated Senator Danzo, has broken into at  _ least _ six heavily-guarded secret facilities, and who inexplicably continues to place among the top ten most eligible bachelors in trashy gossip rags across the city. 

 

_ That’s  _ the man who’s offering her a basket so she can carry her things a little easier, rather than balancing them all in her arms like some sort of animal. 

 

It’s just going to be one of those days, apparently. 

 

You see, years ago the government put together a special program. Take a few dozen worthy candidates (Uchiha Fugaku had volunteered every last member of his family, from distant cousins to his own two sons) and subject them to every cutting-edge augmentation that existed at the time. Nano-fiber weave to reinforce their muscles, a complete reworking of the entire nervous system, bones strengthened by adaptive polymer injections. By the time they were finished these men and women would be more machine than man.

 

It was a  _ shameless _ attempt at one-upping the Hyuga, especially when they unveiled their pride and joy: The Sharingan.

 

The Sharingan was slated to be an ocular augmentation that would put even the Byakugan to shame. It might not be able to offer the same visual range, but it would be directly linked to the user's nervous system, allowing for reaction times that measured in  _ nanoseconds _ . And with all the physical augmentations that came with it? It would turn the Uchiha into the epitome of evolution. According to their creator, they would become the perfect human beings.

 

The perfect killers too. Itachi himself would prove that in one night. 

 

What happened to the vaunted Uchiha program isn't exactly common knowledge, the government had done everything in its power to sweep the entire thing under the rug. But Tenten sits as one tiny piece of a tangled web of lower-city rumormongers and information brokers, she hears things now and then.

 

Then again, it’s also just  _ really  _ hard to cover it up when a lone man breaks out of his cell, slaughters more than thirty supposedly unstoppable warriors, then murders his way through another sixty guards, scientists, and executives on his way out of the facility he was being kept in.

 

Near as anyone can tell, not a single other person in the building survived Itachi’s rampage.

 

Thus it should be excusable that, in response to the last Uchiha’s kind gesture, Tenten’s brain short-circuits rather abruptly. She smiles, she nods, she makes polite, stilted conversation about the weather and which brand of absolutely awful (But cheap!) noodles would work best with her budget. He even pays for her at the checkout, and it’s a blessing that the cashier doesn’t seem to recognize him. If he had he’d have already called the police, and this entire store would be a smoldering crater.

 

“I’ve been told, Miss Tenten, that if I’m looking for someone who can kill the unkillable,  _ you  _ are the woman to meet.” He smiles as he says it, expression as benign as if he’d merely told her it might rain tomorrow.

 

Straight to the point, this one. Though even as flattering as that particular rumor is, Tenten can’t help but think it might be a little unfounded. Where would someone even get the idea that she was capable of ‘kill the unkillable’? That was ridiculous-

 

Oh. Fuck.  _ Hidan _ . 

 

“I wouldn’t go  _ that  _ far-” Her attempt at correcting Itachi’s unfounded assumption is interrupted when the man presses a note with an address into her hands. A glance can tell her that it’s for one of the thousands of cheap motels scattered around the lower city. The sort of place where a  _ normal  _ person might have to buy their own lock to put on the door. 

 

“This is where I’ll be staying the next three days.” Wait what-? Now  _ that  _ is enough to knock her out of her Itachi-induced haze long enough to give the guy a suspicious look. 

 

She freezes when she meets those neon-red eyes, glowing faintly even in the afternoon light. It’s a kind of gaze she’s all too familiar with, the kind that belongs to a man with no doubts about the limits of his abilities. Orochimaru has similar eyes, no matter what form he might be taking at the time. Tsunade too, on those rare occasions when she can be bothered to drag herself from her near-constant drunken haze. 

 

Itachi Uchiha knows  _ exactly  _ what he is capable of. 

 

“You have three days to prepare yourself, then you will try to kill me.” 

 

He knows, and now he wants to see if he can go even further. 

 

“If you fail to arrive within the time limit, I will find you.” When he smiles this time it’s the same as before, yet Tenten’s hands shake at the sight of it. “I look forward to seeing what you can do, Tenten.” 

 

He leaves her with that, and thankfully she manages to stumble her way to a rusty old bench before her legs give out from under her. She’s trembling like a leaf, head cradled in her hands. God, she must look like some junkie who’s gone too long without her fix.

 

Itachi Uchiha has challenged her to a deathmatch. 

 

She’s hyperventilating, too many conflicting thoughts running through her head all at once. She has to hide- She has to  _ run.  _ The police won’t be able to do a thing even  _ if  _ they decide to stick their necks out for some random unregistered gutter-rat. So her only option is to pack her things and get the hell out of town. Maybe she can start a new life in the borderlands. Paint her face and get a taste for human flesh and creepy skull ornamentation, or whatever it is those psychopathic desert-dwellers do. 

 

_ I look forward to seeing what you can do, Tenten. _

 

… 

 

Or…

 

(The very thought of it sends a chill through her veins.)

 

Or she could take him on. 

 

Her odds aren’t great, in fact they’re as close to zero as one can probably  _ get _ . But Itachi had challenged  _ her _ . Konoha is a city with a thousand guns for hire, but for some reason he’d tracked  _ her _ all the way to this tiny little grocer and thrown down the proverbial gauntlet. Why not ol’ One-Eye? Why not the Salamander? Or even one of the dozens of newer mercs making a name for themselves like Aburame, or that crazy Team Seven? 

 

Was it just a passing whim? Or had he seen something in her worth pursuing? 

 

The shaking has stopped by now. A calm descends over her, and with it comes the first tentative roots of  _ something _ . 

 

Itachi. Tsunade. Sakura. Lee. Shikamaru. Orochimaru. That girl who took her arm. 

 

They’re all driven by that something, a burning desire to see just how far their hard work can take them. Tenten has always just gone with the flow of things, getting swept up in Gai and Lee’s enthusiasm, or the machinations of people like Tsunade and Shikamaru. She can’t even think of a time she did something like this just for the thrill of it, just to test what she’s capable of. It’s an intoxicating thought.

 

And honestly, there’s no way she could haul all of her things along with her. So running is out.

 

She’s nowhere close to content with her decision, but three days later a dozen of the angriest thugs Tenten can afford will kick down the door to Itachi’s room. 

 

(When she walks by days later, she’ll find half the building has been all but obliterated. The undamaged rooms are still available for rent though, people down here are adaptable like that.)

 

She’s not surprised when none of them report in after, she didn’t actually expect them to get far. They’re a declaration of intent more than anything. 

 

_ ‘I accept, now come and get me.’ _

 

Not the most elegant gauntlet she could have thrown, but she’s working on a budget here. 

 

Tenten is far from that poorly armed girl she used to be though, and if she intends to face down an Uchiha she’ll need every last piece of ordinance she’s managed to scavenge and steal over the years. Weapons, bombs, traps, even a downright  _ nasty  _ automated scrap gun Sakura managed to throw together in a single night. Her arsenal may not be the prettiest, or the newest, but  _ damn  _ if it isn’t impressive nonetheless. 

 

She holes herself up in an abandoned warehouse near the edge of town, the kind that’s absolutely littered with narrow hallways and dead ends. It’s also secluded enough that there’s little risk of some punk kid wandering by and interrupting things. Tenten is more than happy to spend her three days turning the entire facility into a nightmarish maze of traps, tricks, and general unpleasantness for anyone stupid enough to step one foot inside. 

 

When he arrives, Itachi carves a path right through with an envious ease. His eyes cut a glowing streak through the darkened halls as he avoids her carefully planted explosives, weaving through shrapnel by the thinnest of margins and emerging unscathed. Poison gas turns out to be useless, and fire equally so. Whatever they made these Uchiha out of, it’s incredibly resilient. He cuts his way through tripwires and other mundane traps, even the renovated assassin-drone she was so proud of is completely ineffective, minced into bite-sized pieces before it even hits the ground.  

 

He doesn’t even bother with destroying her cameras, placed such that she always has an unobstructed view of his inevitable progress. 

 

She thinks she has him when he wanders straight into the turret’s sights, a carefully placed explosive collapsing the path behind him and leaving him trapped in its kill-zone. By all rights it should be impossible to avoid it, the thing can throw out enough superheated metal to fill the entire hallway. There’s simply no place to  _ go _ . 

 

Of course the one thing Tenten hadn’t counted on was some kind of ninja  _ bullshit _ . 

 

It’s understandable. No one could have predicted that, when faced with a literal wall of razor sharp scrap metal flying his way, Itachi Uchiha’s response would be to  _ cut  through it _ . 

 

For a normal person, even for any other  _ augmented _ person, it would be an impossible feat. Hell, any other  _ Uchiha  _ would probably slip and end up a fine red mist splattered across the walls in this situation. But this is no ordinary Uchiha. 

 

This is Itachi.

 

His entire body blurs, his blade nothing more than a silver flash as the weave of synthetic fibers making up his muscle mass kicks into overdrive. His eyes begin to spin at a dizzying rate, and every last bullet in his path is catalogued and deflected by the sword in his hands. It’s an absolutely  _ flawless  _ display of precision, and though a few of the projectiles get close enough to brush past the reinforced surface of his skin, not a single one penetrates his defense. 

 

Then there’s an impossible burst of speed her eyes can’t even  _ hope _ to follow- And in the time it takes her to blink he’s crossed the remaining distance between him and the turret. Behind him the machine goes silent, and Itachi lets out a soft breath as he sheathes his blade. 

 

A second later it falls to pieces with a crash.

 

It’s all very dramatic. But the sort of thing that might seem cheesy in some low-budget sci-fi flick is absolutely  _ terrifying _ in real life. That was everything she had. Every last trick up her sleeve and all it amounts to is a few surface wounds and a ruined outfit. He’s not even limping, just walking as serenely as ever towards the room where she’s been watching his progress via datapad.  

 

Well then. She’s already committed this far. If she’s going to die here she might as well make a proper go of it. 

 

The main warehouse is an enormous room filled wall to wall with steel shipping containers. Stacks of them are piled almost to the ceiling in some places, and in others those very stacks have toppled into a mess of steel, leaving the entire room a veritable jungle gym of impossibly narrow paths and potential ambush points. 

 

It’s atop one of the many stacks that Tenten sits, several candy bar wrappers strewn about, a half-empty cup of now cold coffee beside her, and a rifle cradled in her arms. 

 

The instant the doors open she puts a shot through the shadow she sees there, and then she has to roll out of the way before one of her own bombs sails through the space her head had recently occupied. It explodes against the far wall, the echoing boom reverberating through the room as the game begins. 

 

Itachi’s first move is, predictably enough, to kill the lights. The crack of a gun he must have been concealing all this time echoes out, and one by one they explode in showers of glass, steadily enveloping the room in darkness. A clever move considering he can almost certainly see in the dark, where she most definitely cannot. It’s doubly effective since in the sudden blackness the glow of her datapad is now  _ dangerously  _ bright-

 

It highlights him perfectly when he darts up to it, only to find it propped up by a brick atop one of the highest stacks of containers. It’s a little strange that he hesitates when he sees it, but she’s not about to miss out on an opportunity. She still doesn’t know if her opening shot from earlier hit him or not, but she  _ swears  _ this one takes a chunk out of something before he dives down into the cover of lower ground. 

 

It takes him  _ moments  _ to calculate the trajectory of her shot, his body a blur as he vaults over a rusted heap of metal to land where she’d been set up. She’s already on the move though, pulling the pin on a grenade and tossing it behind her just as she rounds the corner towards her next position. 

 

It’s a cozy little spot hidden away between two fallen containers, one that gives her an excellent view down the very path that Itachi takes to trail after her. Another shot echoes through the room and she’s off once more, she knows there’s no chance in hell he’d let her get away with taking a second. 

 

In an ideal world her plan would go off without a hitch. She could keep up this game of cat and mouse, taking potshots at him from across the warehouse before darting off to safety and her next vantage point. 

 

Itachi Uchiha would not  _ exist _ in an ideal world though, and nothing makes this fact more evident than just how quickly he turns her plan on its head. 

 

She’s only taken four shots at him when he finally cuts her off, his glowing eyes piercing the gloom are the only warning she gets before his humming sword cuts through the air. She barely ducks her head in time to avoid it, watching with wide eyes as it carves effortlessly through the steel container beside her. 

 

Once upon a time she’d thought that  _ Lee  _ was dangerous up close. That was before Gai had gotten serious one day during the course of their sparring. His student she could handle, (For a few minutes at least) sometimes she could even squeeze in a win on a good day. Gai though, had taken them  _ both  _ down in seconds. Even Sakura, when she’d occasionally agree to join Tenten in her lessons, couldn’t hold a candle to the amount of sheer skill on display. The girl could knock down a concrete wall with a single punch, but Gai had her pinned without breaking a sweat. 

 

Suffice to say, facing Itachi in melee feels a little like that.

 

She loses her rifle in seconds, the set of knives stashed in the compartments of her prosthetic arm within the minute, and were it not for an ill-timed cough she might have lost her life soon after that. It’s a sobering thought as she disengages, darting through the twisting maze towards where she’d stashed another gun. 

 

There are dozens of weapons hidden here and there on the off chance that she’d need them, she just wishes she had time to make it to something bigger. A handgun probably won’t cut it against her current opponent, but it’s a comforting weight in her hands regardless. 

 

It’s strange really, the bone-deep terror that had once gripped her is all but gone now. She knows, pressing her back to the metal crate and listening to the tense silence, that somewhere out there in the darkness is one of the most dangerous men alive, hunting for her. But something has been niggling at her all this time though, the question she never could answer about all this. 

 

“So why me?” Tenten can’t stop the words from escaping her mouth, and she winces as the tension in the room instantly skyrockets. She’s on a time-limit now, surely Itachi will be able to zero in the longer she talks. “Why pick  _ me  _ for your fucked up killing game?”

 

She doesn’t really expect an answer, but after a few tense seconds that congenial voice rings out in reply. 

 

“Mm. A number of things really.” It’s not hard to tell where he is from the sound of his voice, even as it echoes confusingly off the far walls. The problem is that he’s getting  _ pretty close _ . “You’re relatively new, for one. Which means I’ve no idea what you’re capable of, aside from a few flattering rumors about your abilities.”

 

Tenten is going to track down every last one of those morons who watched her disembowel Hidan, and she’s going to skin them with a  _ cheese grater- _

 

“But aside from that... I suppose you might call it a hunch.”

 

…

 

“I saw you- Callouses from handling a gun regularly. A prosthetic arm clearly crafted by a master, but the way you use it speaks of a traumatic experience. Not one, not two, but  _ three  _ separate weapons on your person. And you knew who I was. From that first moment I saw fear in your eyes.”

 

….

 

“There was something else as well though. Maybe everything I heard was a lie, maybe you  _ aren’t  _ the god-slaying warrior a horde of blood drunk cultists make you out to be. But I saw you, and I  _ still  _ couldn’t dismiss the possibility entirely. And that is something worth testing, no?”

 

….. She’s smiling. She can’t help it. A fierce, toothy grin has spread across her face, fueled by the burning pride welling up inside her chest. It’s nice to be acknowledged is the thing, even more so when it’s coming from a man like this. He may be a murderous psychopath out for her blood, but he knows his stuff. 

 

What feels even better though, is watching his shadowy figure turn the corner just in time to catch nine millimeters through the throat. He falls with a choked gasp, thudding to the floor and twitching until her second shot stops even that. Then a third, just for good measure. 

 

She’s contemplating wasting a  _ fourth  _ bullet when her phone rings. 

 

The phone she made sure to turn off before she got into this mess. 

 

She fumbles her gun into her other hand, reaching into a pocket to pull out the device and squint down at the brightly lit screen. It makes her pause though, when she sees an unfortunately familiar pair of amused yellow eyes there, accompanied by a sly but childish smile. Oh that’s definitely not good. 

 

“Hello Miss Tenten, that was a little rude don’t you think?” His voice rings too-loud from the tiny speakers,  _ especially  _ too loud now that she’s no longer so sure that she’s won this little game of hers.

 

“Mitsuki what the _fuck_?” Tenten hisses it between grit teeth, the high of victory now long since gone. She’s never been all that great with kids to be honest, and that goes double for the creepy (Literal) brainchildren of quasi-immortal programmers. Hopefully whatever god is out there will forgive her for failing to watch her language. “ _Was that_ _you?”_

 

To be fair, he  _ lives  _ on the net. The kid’s probably heard worse. And it’s not like it’s the first time she’s shot him, or rather the body he happened to be inhabiting at the time. But that’s a story for another time. 

 

“I heard that you were fighting someone, but I never imagined it would be  _ Itachi _ !” He sounds  _ far  _ too excited about that prospect, the image of his face getting even closer to the screen. “Even my parent couldn’t kill him.”

 

What. Orochimaru and Itachi had  _ fought _ before? And the city was still standing? 

 

No. Wait. Still not the time for this. She shakes her head to clear it, absolutely certain now that Itachi is still out in the darkness somewhere. He  _ must  _ know where she is by now, the glow of her phone and Mitsuki’s irresponsibly cheerful voice are pretty much beacons in the darkness of the warehouse. That he hasn’t  _ already _ tracked her down and put a sword through her back is either a miracle, or the work of the boy currently peering at her from her phone. 

 

“Mitsuki I’m kind of in the middle of something, can this wait?” She tries to keep her tone as serious as possible in the face of her growing anxiety, hoping the kid will take the hint and go back to whatever it is he does when he’s not bothering her. She’s long-since learned that there’s no point trying to disconnect on an AI-child who wants to bother her. 

 

“Oh I know. I’m here to help you!”

 

Oh that’s not good. The last time Mitsuki tried to ‘help’ she’d had to spend two weeks lying low until the heat died down. He certainly  _ tries  _ to do the right thing when he can, but it’s never anything but obvious just whose brain-scans make up half of his personality.

 

“I asked Aunt Karin to let some of the experiments loose, then turned your datapad into a transponder for them to home in on.” He says it like he’s just announced he’s throwing her a surprise party, bless his little heart.

 

“ _ You did what?!”  _ The image stutters for a second, and Orochimaru’s face briefly overlays that of his son as his voice cuts into the conversation. He looks absolutely  _ livid  _ too. “Mitsuki you will-”

 

He cuts off into static, Mitsuki’s face reappearing with a somehow even  _ more  _ smug expression than the one he usually wears. 

 

“Whoops! My parent’s trying to hack in and find you so I think I’ll be going now.” His grin turns wicked and he gives her a wink from behind the safety of the screen, the little shit. “Good luck Miss Tenten! I’m betting a lot on your survival!” 

 

The screen goes blank before she can even think of a retort, leaving her in a suddenly ominous silence. 

 

“You know,” Itachi says from where he’s been waiting politely behind her the last few minutes, “Normally I’d say it’s impolite to take a call during something like this, but I know how these things go. I have a younger brother too somewhere. Probably.”

 

The concept of there being  _ another  _ Uchiha somewhere in this god-forsaken city is one she’s going to shelve for the time being. Today has already gone to hell in a handbasket, no need to throw another worry entirely on top of the pile. 

 

“Yeah, he’s a treat.” She sighs out the words, turning fully to face Itachi and giving him a chagrined smile. “Do you think we can maybe postpone this? Take a rain check?”

 

A strange expression flashes over Itachi’s face at that, followed by an uncomfortably long pause as he stares down at her. She’s acutely aware that he’s basically already won, because he’s too close. She probably won’t even have time to raise her gun if he decides to follow through with his promise of killing her, she’ll be just another corpse to add to his long,  _ long  _ list.

 

But he does look tired, all that running and dodging must have taken  _ some  _ toll on him right? She’s a quick shot, quicker than anyone else she’s ever met. Maybe it’s a shot worth taking. 

 

Her hand twitches, and it’s apparently enough to get the tiniest hint of a smile from the man. 

 

“We’ll call it a draw, hm?” He cocks his head to one side, looking as if he’s hearing something that she can’t. “I’ve tangled with Orochimaru’s little minions once already, it’s not an experience that bears repeating.”

 

Then he does the strangest thing, he turns his back to her and starts to walk away. 

 

And just like that, she has her shot. 

 

A fast draw is an important skill to learn for anyone hoping to survive in the lowest tiers of the city. You shoot first, you shoot true, and you get to live a little longer than whatever poor sucker you were up against. 

 

Earlier Tenten had marveled at the speed Itachi could muster under the right circumstances.

 

If someone had been around to see her now, they would have marveled just the same. 

 

In the blink of an eye she lifts her gun, her body giving in to that same bone-deep instinct that has marked her most important kills thus far. It’s as if something else is moving through her, and for an instant she thinks back to Hidan. To the way Death had cradled him. 

 

Like Tsunade’s fist, or Itachi’s sword, her bullet becomes something… Inevitable.

 

It’s a shame she couldn’t use it on Itachi himself, but alas  _ he  _ is not her bullet’s intended target. Instead it drills through the skull of some sort of twisted metal abomination that had been part way through pouncing on him. It lets out a horrific, pained screech as it falls to the floor mid-leap sliding along for several meters before coming to a stop in front of her. 

 

It twitches for a second, then falls still. 

 

Itachi’s gaze has never been sharper, and to be the focus of the full brunt of his appraisal is an unfortunately familiar terror. 

 

“I guess he had a lab closer than we thought, huh?” They’re the last words either of them can speak before they’re set upon by a horde of nightmares. 

 

The creatures are inherently hard to describe, obscured as they are by the darkness of the warehouse and the haze of adrenaline that will blessedly obscure the memories of tonight. They’re an amalgamation of flesh and machine, bits and pieces of organic matter sewn together with the most  _ tenuous  _ threads of metal. Were Orochimaru here, he could explain each and every one to her, and how they each had some specific purpose or query he’d got it into his head to test. 

 

Like that one over there, losing each of its six blade-tipped arms to Itachi’s whirlwind strikes. That one was to see how many limbs a human brain could be forced to manage simultaneously. Or the one dripping sizzling yellow acid from a series of holes in its torso. A test to see just how far the body’s ability to manufacture stomach acid could be pushed.

 

Oh- And that one that looks like it’s been hollowed out and had all of its major organs replaced with some kind of explosive device- Actually wait no, that one was just for shits and giggles. 

 

But Orochimaru  _ isn’t  _ here right now, so all of this nuance is lost on Tenten. A shame really. 

 

She mostly just thinks these things are freaks. It makes it so much easier to gun them down as they swarm over the piles of crates by the dozen. How Orochimaru got his hands on this many test subjects is  _ not  _ something she wants to think about, nor is just how close she’d come to ending up on his lab table all those years ago. 

 

So instead of thinking, she empties the last of her clip into a weird looking motherfucker with machine guns for legs. She barely has time to process that she’s just used the last of her bullets before a new gun comes soaring through the air, and right into her waiting palm. Because apparently Itachi can fend off three screeching abominations and  _ count her bullets  _ at the same time. At this point she’s not even going to question it. 

 

Mostly because she’s just been handed a  _ very  _ nice gun, and it would be a shame to waste precious time worrying about someone else when she could be firing it. 

 

It doesn’t seem to have a clip, probably running on some sort of advanced power cell tech. Whatever it is though, it works like a charm. Each bullet packs more of a punch than most rifles she’s used, tearing bloody chunks out of anything unlucky enough to get caught in her sights. She’s not too proud to admit that a slightly maniacal laugh may have slipped out once or twice. It’s just hard not to feel giddy watching a  _ handgun _ punch a hole a foot in diameter through a ten-foot tall horror movie reject with chainsaws for fingers. 

 

But as big as her pile of corpses is getting, Itachi’s is noticeably bigger. Even limited to just the range of his blade he cuts through the ranks of experiments just as easily as he’d cut through her traps earlier. Every blow leads into the next, taking him from monster to monster in swift, brutally efficient motions that leave a trail of dead and dying in his wake. 

 

Tenten sees him cough exactly once, allowing a nasty little beast to dart in and rake its claws along his leg. He tears its arms off a second later in a terrifyingly casual feat of strength, and  then he uses them to club it over the head. 

 

Yikes. 

 

Just as quickly as it came, the tide of monsters ebbs soon after. Ferocious and bloodthirsty though they may have been, these things were hardly the perfect killing machines that Orochimaru usually fielded. They were experiments, barely held together and probably mad with pain. Nothing that might pose a threat to a man like Itachi, even in such numbers. 

 

Tenten, on the other hand, immediately finds the nearest surface to lean on the moment the last wailing creature slides off of Itachi’s blade and to the ground. Her heavy panting is the only sound as Itachi calmly surveys the scene of carnage they’d just created. He steps lightly through the bodies, shaking the too-dark blood from the length of his blade and sheathing it once more. 

 

He pauses as he passes by her, and she’s too exhausted to do anything but give him a wry expression as he reaches out to ruffle her hair. 

 

“You did well.” Erk- Damn, is her heart really going to skip a beat every time an absurdly competent person praises her? “I think I’ve seen enough of this city for the time being though, I’ve been thinking about testing the people of the desert next. What do you think?”

 

“Yeah, they seem crazy and violent. Just your type.” Her retort earns her a soft laugh from the man, genuine amusement appearing in his eyes.

 

“So I’d heard. Who knows, maybe they’ll be the match I’ve been looking for?” He turns away from her once again, before shooting her a knowing look over his shoulder. “But if not, I’ll be back. I look forward to seeing how much you’ve grown, Tenten.”

 

And then just like that, he’s gone. Walking out the door and leaving her amidst the sea of bodies like some kind of asshole. 

 

There’s no way in hell he’s getting his gun back now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a bit huh
> 
> This would have been out a little sooner but once I discovered Mitsuki I was physically forced to fit him into this chapter somehow, and that took some rewriting. He deserves it though, my boy. 
> 
> Highlights of my thought process while writing this-  
> While writing the turret bit: Shit I made Itachi into Genji  
> While writing Tenten's quickdraw: SHIT I MADE TENTEN INTO MCREE
> 
> Anywho next chapter is going to have Ino probably. I haven't decided just yet.

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the Cyberpunk Tenten au that no one wanted except for me. 
> 
> Why does this exist you ask? Because I want nothing more out of this life than to insert Tenten into the protag role of every single fandom trope and au there is. Also because any universe where guns exist is a universe in which Tenten is basically unstoppable, and no one can convince me otherwise.
> 
> Also also: If Kishimoto won't appreciate her then I damn well will.
> 
> (If y'all see anything that's awkwardly worded or weird PLEASE do not hesitate to hit me up with it. I proofread this but it's 2 in the morning and I live to suffer)


End file.
